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Denver Post

Denver, Colorado, Tuesday, November 18, 2003

 

David Irving comments:

THE article reproduced here is evidence of the corrosive effects of positive discrimination.
   Even making allowances for this journalist's strictly limited vocabulary, her writing is bereft of ideas and barren of creative thinking. I expect the Denver Post's editor privately agrees, but he is aware of the drawbacks of rewarding for merit without fear or favor, and of ruthlessly penalizing for inadequacy. Some restrictions apply, as they say.
As many Denver readers will know, I was able to address them in comparative tranquility at a location in South Aurora, a southern suburb, after we had successfully packed off Newsum and her unappetizing friends -- I hope that will not be taken as an indication that we would have entertained any cannibalistic designs on them -- to a location many miles away.

YES, it is true that I once lost a libel action brought against me by a Royal Navy captain. Counsel's advice was that we had a strong defense, as we had relied solely on Admiralty documents. But the verdict is in the hands of a jury.
   That was thirty-four years ago. Since then nobody has successfully sued me for libel: which is more than many newspapers can say.
Which reminds me, wasn't it in Denver that Newsum's spiritual fatherland, the Anti-Defamation League, was recently ordered to pay record damages for libel to a couple whose telephones they had tapped, and whom they accused of anti-Semitism.

Charges of bigotry backfire, ADL loses Denver appeal against $10.5m libel award | $10m Libel award against Anti-Defamation League upheld

Nazi swill, coming soon

By Dani Newsum

NewsumDAVID Irving is vile. I felt filthy reading and writing about his swill. His is a wasted life. According to his website, David Irving, a Nazi-defending, Holocaust-denying 'historian' is slithering into Denver (or Aurora -- both cities are mentioned on his tour schedule) on Saturday, December 20.

If you don't know the name, Irving is a British author of several books on World War II, most notably 'Hitler's War,' written from Hitler's point of view.

Irving considers himself a historian (he doesn't have a college degree), and he does have a following.

In 2000 he made international news by suing Emory University (Atlanta) professor Deborah Lipstadt and her publisher Penguin Books for allegedly libeling him in Lipstadt's book, 'Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory.' In the book, Lipstadt calls Irving 'one of the most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust denial,' and accused him of twisting evidence 'until it conforms with his ideological leanings and political propaganda.'

Irving filed his libel suit in England because British law actually puts the burden of proof on the person being sued -- Lipstadt -- instead of on the person alleging the libel. In order to vindicate Lipstadt and Penguin, their attorney -- Richard Rampton -- introduced evidence about the Holocaust and put the spotlight on Irving's demented and well-documented trail of Holocaust denial. Britain's Guardian Unlimited provided extensive coverage of the trial.

Irving is a man obsessed with Hitler and with denying Hitler and his Third Reich's extermination of millions of Jews and other targets of Nazi genocide. 'The biggest lie of the lot, the blood libel on the German people, is the lie that the Germans had factories of death in which they liquidated millions of their opponents,' he says.

According to Irving's trial testimony, the Nazis killed 'between one and 4 million Jews' during World War II, but not in gas chambers and not as part of a systematic Final Solution.

'The defendants (Lipstadt and Penguin) will find it very hard to prove it was a Third Reich decision and an Adolf Hitler decision. There were multiple shootings, but it was not pursuant to any programme.'

During the trial, Irving consistently denied the existence and use of gas chambers at Auschwitz. In an exchange with Lipstadt attorney Richard Rampton, Irving spewed:

'I say quite tastelessly, in fact, that more women died on the back seat of Edward Kennedy's car at Chappaquiddick than ever died in a gas chamber in Auschwitz -- Oh you think that's tasteless? How about this: there are so many Auschwitz survivors going around, in fact the number increases as the years go past, which is biologically very odd to say the least. I'm going to form an association of Auschwitz Survivors, Survivors of the Holocaust and Other Liars, or the ASSHOLS.'

In a review of a book about the Irving libel trial, Salon.com repeated Irving's obscene acronym for Holocaust survivors.

An earlier Salon.com article on the trial quotes Irving musing,

"If I was a Jew, I would be far more concerned, not by the question of who pulled the trigger, but why; and I do not think that has ever been properly investigated," Irving once said. "There must be some reason why anti-Semitism keeps on breaking out like some kind of epidemic."

The trial judge ruled in favor of Professor Lipstadt and Penguin, finding that David Irving was 'an active Holocaust denier; that he was anti-Semitic and racist and that he associated with right-wing extremists who promoted neo-Nazism.'

The judgment left Irving bankrupt, and an international pariah. Irving's website claims that Australia, Canada and Germany have banned him from stepping on their shores. The Guardian reported that Italy and Austria have also refused to allow Irving entry.

But according to his website he's already in the land of the free and begins his 2003 U.S.A. tour in Cleveland this Wednesday, November 19, [2003] and arrives in Denver (or Aurora) on Saturday, December 20, the first full day of Hanukkah.

I have a few questions.

  • Since David Irving is bankrupt, who's sponsoring this tour? He has supporters abroad and in the U.S. -- this isn't the first time that Irving has fouled U.S. soil. Where is his Colorado event and who's providing the venue and lunch?
  • And WHERE IS crazy Tom 'on the border' Tancredo when he's actually needed?

Note: Irving's lost in court before -- 30 years ago, he was found guilty of libeling a British captain. And yet some real historians and others still have kind words for Irving. I found more to read Irving and Holocaust denial at www.nizkor.org and www.holocaust-history.org.

Dani Newsum, a former civil rights attorney in the Colorado Attorney General's office, appears weekly on KBDI Channel 12's "Colorado Inside Out" (8 p.m. Fridays).

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